Martech Is Eating Up CMOs' Budgets

As digital marketing becomes more automated, marketers have found themselves allocating more of their budgets to technology.

In an August 2018 study by Gartner of 621 marketing leaders in North America and the UK, respondents reported that, on average, they expect to spend 29% of their budget on marketing technology this year, up from 22% in 2017. This makes marketing tech the single biggest investment area for marketing resources, according to Gartner’s researchers.

Other research indicates that spend on marketing tech will likely continue growing.

Nearly two-thirds of the 500 UK and US marketing execs surveyed by Wipro and Coleman Parkes Research in April 2018 said they plan to spend more on marketing technology next year. Just 8% of respondents said they will decrease their investments in martech next year. On average, respondents in the survey spent $682,000 on marketing technology.

According to an April 2018 report by Forrester Research, US marketers will increase their investment in marketing technology by 27% over the next four years, spending more than $122 billion on marketing tech by 2022. Similar to Gartner’s figures, Forrester expects that marketing tech will account for 30% of total marketing spending in 2018. The subdivisions of marketing tech that are likely to see the biggest growth in investment, according to Forrester, are data, ad tech and marketing automation.

Marketers ramping up martech investment are falling in line with other companies pouring money into tech projects.

In June, Deloitte and OnResearch surveyed 500 US executives from privately-held, mid-market companies and found that one-third of respondents spend more than 5% of their annual revenues on technology. Another 45% of respondents surveyed said they spend 1% to 5% of their revenues on tech. More than half of respondents—57%—said they’re spending more on tech this year vs. last year.

How Much of Their Marketing Budget Are Companies in North America and UK Allocating to or Spending on Select People/Programs? (% of total, by category, 2017 & 2018)